NOT in point of genius only, but even in point of time, Chaucer may claim the
proud designation of "first" English poet. He wrote "The Court of Love" in 1345,
and "The Romaunt of the Rose," if not also "Troilus and Cressida," probably
within the next decade: the dates usually assigned to the poems of Laurence
Minot extend from 1335 to 1355, while "The Vision of Piers Plowman" mentions
events that occurred in 1360 and 1362 -- before which date Chaucer had certainly
written "The Assembly of Fowls" and his "Dream." But, though they were his
contemporaries, neither Minot nor Langland (if Langland was the author of the
Vision) at all approached Chaucer in the finish, the force, or the universal
interest of their works and the poems of earlier writer; as Layamon and the
author of the "Ormulum," are less English than Anglo-Saxon or Anglo- Norman.
Those poems reflected the perplexed struggle for supremacy between the two grand
elements of our language, which marked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; a
struggle intimately associated with the political relations between the
conquering Normans and the subjugated Anglo-Saxons. Chaucer found two branches
of the language; that spoken by the people, Teutonic in its genius and its
forms; that spoken by the learned and the noble, based on the French Yet each
branch had begun to borrow of the other -- just as nobles and people had been
taught to recognise that each needed the other in the wars and the social tasks
of the time; and Chaucer, a scholar, a courtier, a man conversant with all
orders of society, but accustomed to speak, think, and write in the words of the
highest, by his comprehensive genius cast into the simmering mould a magical
amalgamant which made the two half-hostile elements unite and interpenetrate
each other. Before Chaucer wrote, there were two tongues in England, keeping
alive the feuds and resentments of cruel centuries; when he laid down his pen,
there was practically but one speech -- there was, and ever since has been, but
one people.
Geoffrey Chaucer, according to the most trustworthy traditions- for authentic
testimonies on the subject are wanting -- was born in 1328; and London is
generally believed to have been his birth-place. It is true that Leland, the
biographer of England's first great poet who lived nearest to his time, not
merely speaks of Chaucer as having been born many years later than the date now
assigned, but mentions Berkshire or Oxfordshire as the scene of his birth. So
great uncertainty have some felt on the latter score, that elaborate parallels
have been drawn between Chaucer, and Homer -- for whose birthplace several
cities contended, and whose descent was traced to the demigods. Leland may seem
to have had fair opportunities of getting at the truth about Chaucer's birth --
for Henry VIII had him, at the suppression of the monasteries throughout
England, to search for records of public interest the archives of the religious
houses. But it may be questioned whether he was likely to find many authentic
particulars regarding the personal history of the poet in the quarters which he
explored; and Leland's testimony seems to be set aside by Chaucer's own evidence
as to his birthplace, and by the contemporary references which make him out an
aged man for years preceding the accepted date of his death. In one of his prose
works, "The Testament of Love," the poet speaks of himself in terms that
strongly confirm the claim of London to the honour of giving him birth; for he
there mentions "the city of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in which I
was forth growen; and more kindly love," says he, "have I to that place than to
any other in earth; as every kindly creature hath full appetite to that place of
his kindly engendrure, and to will rest and peace in that place to abide." This
tolerably direct evidence is supported -- so far as it can be at such an
interval of time -- by the learned Camden; in his Annals of Queen Elizabeth, he
describes Spencer, who was certainly born in London, as being a fellow-citizen
of Chaucer's -- "Edmundus Spenserus, patria Londinensis, Musis adeo arridentibus
natus, ut omnes Anglicos superioris aevi poetas, ne Chaucero quidem concive
excepto, superaret." <1> The records of the time notice more than one person of
the name of Chaucer, who held honourable positions about the Court; and though
we cannot distinctly trace the poet's relationship with any of these namesakes
or antecessors, we find excellent ground for belief that his family or friends
stood well at Court, in the ease with which Chaucer made his way there, and in
his subsequent career.
Like his great successor, Spencer, it was the fortune of Chaucer to live
under a splendid, chivalrous, and high-spirited reign. 1328 was the second year
of Edward III; and, what with Scotch wars, French expeditions, and the strenuous
and costly struggle to hold England in a worthy place among the States of
Europe, there was sufficient bustle, bold achievement, and high ambition in the
period to inspire a poet who was prepared to catch the spirit of the day. It was
an age of elaborate courtesy, of high- paced gallantry, of courageous venture,
of noble disdain for mean tranquillity; and Chaucer, on the whole a man of
peaceful avocations, was penetrated to the depth of his consciousness with the
lofty and lovely civil side of that brilliant and restless military period. No
record of his youthful years, however, remains to us; if we believe that at the
age of eighteen he was a student of Cambridge, it is only on the strength of a
reference in his "Court of Love", where the narrator is made to say that his
name is Philogenet, "of Cambridge clerk;" while he had already told us that
when he was stirred to seek the Court of Cupid he was "at eighteen year of age."
According to Leland, however, he was educated at Oxford, proceeding thence to
France and the Netherlands, to finish his studies; but there remains no certain
evidence of his having belonged to either University. At the same time, it is
not doubted that his family was of good condition; and, whether or not we accept
the assertion that his father held the rank of knighthood -- rejecting the
hypotheses that make him a merchant, or a vintner "at the corner of Kirton Lane"
-- it is plain, from Chaucer's whole career, that he had introductions to public
life, and recommendations to courtly favour, wholly independent of his genius.
We have the clearest testimony that his mental training was of wide range and
thorough excellence, altogether rare for a mere courtier in those days: his
poems attest his intimate acquaintance with the divinity, the philosophy, and
the scholarship of his time, and show him to have had the sciences, as then
developed and taught, "at his fingers' ends." Another proof of Chaucer's good
birth and fortune would he found in the statement that, after his University
career was completed, he entered the Inner Temple - - the expenses of which
could be borne only by men of noble and opulent families; but although there is
a story that he was once fined two shillings for thrashing a Franciscan friar in
Fleet Street, we have no direct authority for believing that the poet devoted
himself to the uncongenial study of the law. No special display of knowledge on
that subject appears in his works; yet in the sketch of the Manciple, in the
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, may be found indications of his familiarity
with the internal economy of the Inns of Court; while numerous legal phrases and
references hint that his comprehensive information was not at fault on legal
matters. Leland says that he quitted the University "a ready logician, a smooth
rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious mathematician,
and a holy divine;" and by all accounts, when Geoffrey Chaucer comes before us
authentically for the first time, at the age of thirty-one, he was possessed of
knowledge and accomplishments far beyond the common standard of his day.
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